Karaoke Forums

Contemplating the purchase of a fast loading, professional quality DVD player.

Prefer a 19" rack-mount unit but can configure brackets if need be. RSQ offers
a unit that boasts a four second load time. Is RSQ good equipment?

Looking for suggestions based on personal experience with DVD players. CD+G
format not a requirement since this will be used primarily for playing music videos.
The ability to cue two or more discs would be sweet, but a single drawer will work.

Thanks in advance.

_________________
"Life is tough. It's tougher if you're stupid."

Okay, I've done a lot of reading and I have what I think will work. I bought a
Denon DN-V210 rack-mounted professional player. It loads up pretty quick and
while the specs don't mention playing CD+G, it certainly does.

I installed it in my DJ rack and plan on using it tonight at a show. Wish me luck.

_________________
"Life is tough. It's tougher if you're stupid."

Good luck!
Hope it works for you.
Please keep us informed.

We are computer-based now but still carry a selection of heavy metal DVDs that are requested a lot. We have a very thin DVD player in our rack (not rack mounted) and a switch on the platform where the computer monitor is - of course we don't use the DVD player for discs but it surprises me how easy it is to use both with a switching system installed, and it's nice to offer the DVDs as well. We also use the DVD player and play concert DVDs before the show if there is a while until start time.

Glad you found what you wanted. Let us know how it goes.

The Denon player worked good for the most part. Putting a disc in the drawer
and waiting for it to spin up took about 10 seconds. Moving between chapters
with the remote and starting to play took about 5 seconds.

The hot set up would be to use two machines and switch between them. While
playing one DVD, program the next one and pause it at the chapter you want
to play next. With practice and the right mixer, the show could be nearly seamless.

Ill keep working on it.

_________________
"Life is tough. It's tougher if you're stupid."

Have you considered ripping your videos to your hardrive? (I guess I am assuming your karaoke is computerised) Queueing them up would be a breeze then.
Just an idea.

_________________
Music speaks to the heart in ways words cannot express.

Nope, no computerized gear here........yet.


Kind of off-topic, but I am however getting somewhat fatigued from carrying 10
sixty-disc CaseLogic cases to each karaoke show and an equal number of CDs when
I do a DJ gig.

I'd like to put all the CD+G discs on a USB external drive and use a laptop, but
I haven't been impressed with the systems I've seen. The computerized graphics
appear to have refresh rate issues and the images seem to be jerky and not as
smooth as the disc & player version I use.

Any equipment/software testimonials, suggestions or links in the right direction
might convince me. Let me know what you use. Thanks.

_________________
"Life is tough. It's tougher if you're stupid."

I have not had any of that with my system. I'm running an Acer 3860 laptop with vista and CompuHost. I never had jerky videos at all. You must have been seeing a show run with a CAVS system. That I have seen jerk around as well as crash in the middle of the show.

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The Line Array Experiment is over. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Boy, I've never heard that complaint. Given a halfway-decent setup, I can't see that being a problem at all.


I will tell you that every person I have seen who was once on disks now swears by the computer-based system. I have converted three local hosts to CompuHost, and I use it myself. It is head and shoulders above the other software packages. And it is not difficult to learn. Not only the hosts love it, their singers and audience love it.

You will be able to carry one ten pound laptop case to replace a player (you won't need two) and all those disks.

_________________
[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Looks like CompuHost is the way to go. A little pricy, but worth the cost if it works.

I'd be partial to using Windows XP Professional for an operating system because
I prefer it over Vista.

I'll probably surf eBay for a suitable laptop today, but I'm curious to know what
would you recommend for a processor speed, how much RAM, etc. Thanks.

_________________
"Life is tough. It's tougher if you're stupid."

for windows 2k, you don't need more than a gig of RAM, processor of 2800 works fine.

for xp pro, I'd recommend 2 gb ram, and a dual core at least. It's possible to run it with less, but with the prices of today, why bother.

Jerky graphics can happen if your video card is less than optimal. 256MB or better is recommended if you're going to use video graphics (not just CDG graphics).

I'm talking DESKTOP units here. Laptops measure their processors a bit different.

I have had no trouble with any modern laptop I have tried. But you need one made in the past couple of years. I would recommend a 1G RAM capacity to be safe. Although I run some karaoke on a Celeron with MTU Hoster, I don't try CompuHost on that. It is a bit more graphics-intensive because of the scrolling display (one of it's best features).

So I would say try for a 1.6GHz or better Opteron or Pentium with 1G of RAM. (2G if you are forced to use Vista.) Make sure it has a VGA and/or SVideo output, though all should.

If you don't end up liking the onboard sound, there are a number of available USB sound cards.

The hardest part of the whole process is ripping and naming your CDG disks. I recommend PowerKaraoke as it is about the fastest and most error-free. It costs $39.00 and is well worth it.

_________________
[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

I'd probably use my desktop to rip the discs to an external USB hard drive.
It has a Yamaha CRW8424E that does an excellent job of reading & writing
custom CD+G discs.

I was wondering what is the average time to rip a 15 or 18 song disc with
a 4x setting and is there a program that will automatically label the songs
or will I have to enter title and artist information? With over 10K songs, that
will take a long time. Any shortcuts?

_________________
"Life is tough. It's tougher if you're stupid."

Audiograbber CAN label them with the database feature, but don't swear by it. Sometimes there are errors (manually entered database), and it only works about 80% of the time.

at 4x ripping time for a normal 15-16 track song is under 8 minutes I think... haven't really "timed" it in a long time!

Absolutely. Use PowerKaraoke and forget limiting yourself to 4X.

_________________
[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.